"It was the first thing we addressed today," coach Jay Triano said after yesterday's practice. "Where we are, where they are and what this week means to us."

Where the Raptors are is 18-28 and in 13th place in the 15-team Eastern Conference.

But as bad as that record is - only eight teams in the league are worse off than Toronto - it's not as if the season is shot.

The Nets occupy ninth place with a 20-25 record, and the Bucks, who have lost leading scorer Michael Redd for the season with a knee injury, are in eighth with a paltry 22-26 record. The 19-25 Knicks, 18-26 Charlotte Bobcats and the 18-27 Chicago Bulls began play last night also between the Raptors and the final playoff berth.

"Two teams that are just above us in the standings," said Anthony Parker in assessing the next few days. "Every game's important but these two, with the teams in the positions they are, we know we have to have."

Wanting to have and getting are two entirely different things for the Raptors. They've already lost once to the Bucks in Milwaukee and were beaten at home by Chicago, and it's not as if Toronto has been steamrolling the opposition.

"We look at the standings and we know how important this week is," said Triano. "There's still a lot of Basketball to be played (but) we're looking at a team that's 21/2 games in front of us and we can close that gap significantly.

"We've been playing well, and if we can finish the season playing the way we have been, we won't even have to look at who's ahead of us or who's behind us because we will have climbed up."

Consistency has been Toronto's biggest weakness this season, though, and carrying a two-game winning streak into New Jersey tonight probably isn't worth a whole lot. The Raptors have not won more than three in a row this season.

"It starts right here in practice," said Parker. "You can't really look around the league too much, you can only do what you can control. We want to string some games together."

Beating the Nets often comes down to stopping the high-scoring duo of Vince Carter and Devin Harris, both of whom average 21 points per game.

"We're talking about two guys who could potentially be on the all-star team," said Triano. "They do the majority of their scoring and the majority of their playmaking, so we have to make sure we know where those two guys are. Both of those guys have hurt us this year when they've got on a roll."

Adding to the significance of tonight's game is Toronto's need for a win to split the four-game season series with the Nets. It's not too early to start thinking about tiebreakers, and a New Jersey win gives the Nets a leg up on Toronto.

"When you look at it, there's another half-game involved in this because of the tiebreaker situation should we end up being tied with them at the end," Triano said.

"(The game is) very significant."